Data: The More You Publish, the More Traffic per Hub

I’m not sure if you’ve taken a look at our Success Stories, but if you have a look, you’ll see a pattern in each successful Hubbers’ traffic graphs, the Panda update notwithstanding: their traffic tends to grow over time out of proportion with their Hub publishing activity. Not only does each additional Hub give you more overall traffic (that part’s a no-brainer), but each additional Hub raises the average traffic per Hub.

HubPages engineer Ari Lamstein has queried our enormous database of publishing activity and come up with some fascinating figures that really underscore this point. He took a look at Hubbers in 4 different clusters:

Hubbers who had only published 1 Hub

Hubbers who had published 2-9 Hubs

Hubbers who had published 10-49 Hubs

Hubbers who had published 50 or more Hubs

He then looked at the amount of traffic Hubbers in each of these 4 clusters receive on a per-Hub basis. There was a clear trend at work, here, but the extent to which continued publishing influenced per-Hub traffic surprised even us:

Hubbers who had only published 1 Hub: each Hub gets an average of 16 monthly views

Hubbers who had published 2-9 Hubs: each Hub gets an average of 25 monthly views

Hubbers who had published 10-49 Hubs: each Hub gets an average of 42 monthly views

Hubbers who had published 50 or more Hubs: each hubs gets an average of 77 monthly views

Yes, you’re reading that correctly: our most prolific Hubbers are getting almost five times the traffic per Hub as the one-timers.

Why is that the case? There are several theories that make sense to us. First, the more you publish on HubPages, the more you generally understand what types of Hubs get traffic. You might learn more from Learning Center entries, tips in the Newsletter, suggestions from fellow Hubbers in the Forums, and you might also see patterns among the Hubs that have gotten traction from the search engines. In short, you become a more savvy online writer.

Second, each additional Hub might be enjoying the benefit of your growing readership. The more you publish, the more followers you generally have, so the more people you have reading your Hubs and sharing them (like through social media) with people they know.

Third, the more you publish, the more your profile page accrues Page Rank so that your Hubs might enjoy better provisional ranking based on the trust Google has for your type of writing. Many of our well-published Hubbers have profile pages with Page Ranks of 4, while those who only bothered to publish 1 or 2 Hubs have Page Ranks of 0 or 1.

These theories are just educated guesses; there might be other factors at work, as well. But, nevertheless, the data supports continuing to publish Hubs if it’s readers, traffic, or earnings that you’re after. Far from being a matter of diminishing returns, publishing high-quality Hubs is a craft that pays ever-increasing dividends.

From Ari:

After analyzing the data I realized something surprising: the results mirrored by own experience as an author on HubPages. Most of my 29 Hubs are about classical guitar music. My first Hub, which received 9 visits last month, was about a classical guitar textbook that I use with my teacher. I like this textbook, and was happy to share my experience using it.

A few friends suggested that I write my next Hub about a piece of music that I like. I realized that Hubs are great for writing about music. I included a biography of the composer, a video capsule of someone performing the piece, an Amazon capsule containing a professional recording of the piece, and a link capsule of sheet music. My first few music Hubs were about pieces that I was just learning about from my teacher. My Hub on Legnani’s Caprices, which received 26 visits per month, is an example of a Hub that I wrote around this time.

My friends then suggested that I start using Google’s traffic estimator to see which guitar pieces get more searches. I learned that while “legnani caprices” only gets 210 global monthly searches, “villa lobos etudes” gets 1,900 global monthly searches. I started writing Hubs about pieces that get higher search traffic. My Hub on Villa-Lobos’ Etudes received 191 views in the last month.

The thing to remember is that we are working toward getting the almighty advertising dollar. This is a business opportunity that we engage in. Remember Rome wasn’t built in a day. Our advertising payments aren’t going to happen in a day either.

I am analytical and like to see stats like these. There are various contributing factors, of course, to the number of page views.

1) Jason has highlighted the trend impact of total number of hubs published. (Though his “Panda notwithstanding” qualifier limits its application for newbies trying to gauge personal stats.)

2) Ari has given “anecdotal stats” to point out the effect of global monthly search estimates.

3) Two commenters assume a correlation between social network promotion and page views. I would very much like to see this factor quantified in some way. Some Hubbers promote marketing; others emphasize writing.

I personally do no social networking (yet), write prize-winning hubs, yet am significantly below the curve. My 50 hubs average 9-16 monthly views, depending on time period. Surely the upper limit reflects my own views for editing purposes. Are these low stats affected more by Panda or by lack of social network marketing?

I have only been online for about 2 months, but in that time I have spent hours reading about how to build traffic. The main theme to traffic seems to revolve around what a lot of the power bloggers call web presence.

This data supports everything these guys are saying. As you develop web presence, your overall hits rise across everything you do. It takes time and effort to develop, but they all have seen the rewards.

What an interesting blog – it is very useful having this type of information. Is there any way that similar information can be crunched to equate what sort of average return, (I’m talking $$$s), we should be expecting from they page views?
I am certain I am not taking advantage of ways to make a better return from the views I receive but perhaps the returns I receive are typical. Anyway it would be useful information.
Thanks for a very useful blog.
Lobo

Gotta say that I am trying to keep my eyes on the prize and not stats. Though I love it that other Hubbers read and comment on my articles (and I do with them as well), isn’t a big point that we want to attract outside readers and Google is a big part of doing that?

We all need to tweet and like good Hubs for each other, BTW. Let’s help get the word out to new readers.

I think that it depends on two things – 1) writing a large amount of articles in your niche guarantees more traffic as Google views you as an “expert” on the topic and 2) writing more in general means that more people can find and read your articles…….

I only just joined this week so only got 4 days on MyHubs but have already published 10 hubs that all together got more than 400 page views so far. A couple have received over 80 page views in one day and not just from MyHubs but from Google, Bing, Yahoo as well as Facebook where I do post plus Twitter. I do tend to write about popular trends and topics that I am passionate about and I have a large number of friends on Facebook which might be factors that come into play. I really want my hubscore to increase as well as get more followers though. Its tought to get the hubscore up but I heard it does take patience. Still its annoying!